Do you feel like ricing is a "must"?

Posted by zI9PtXEmOaDlywq1b4OX@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 59 comments

As you may all know, ricing is a niche part of the Linux community, and people who enjoy it often fervently do. One such person is my friend. Unlike my friend who runs a completely customized form of Arch Linux + Hyprland, I use Fedora with GNOME. As you may be able to tell from the title of this post, my friend tends to "remind" me that ricing is a "must" for Linux users because it's one of the privileges of running Linux. I always disagree with him, with my argument often being: If you want it, sure, go ahead. But isn't a must. It's a hobby.

I'm a programmer, and I use Linux for programming purposes. That's all I need Linux for. While barebones Arch Linux may be secure, it isn't as secure as it can be, and setting up security takes a lot of prolonged time and effort, and I don't want to spend time on OS-level security. I let the folks working on Fedora do that for me. I don't want to spend time fully customizing the looks of my OS; I just need something that works, and that's good enough for me.

I get the argument: Why not make your computer truly your own? To which I say, it depends on one's priorities. Maybe if I ever have the time and interest, sure, I'll get into ricing. Maybe I'll get back into using Arch. But, for now, Fedora just lets me work without worrying about things I shouldn't necessarily have to worry about.

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postmodest@reddit

Repeat after me:

Linux is a tool, not a lifestyle.

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arf20__@reddit

Linux (and free software) IS a lifestyle, the lifestyle of chosing to live heathlily, with tools that are good for you, what you do, and the community as a whole.

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postmodest@reddit

I would never call sed good for me.

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Serenase@reddit

And an operating system, not a religion.

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ben2talk@reddit

Amen to that 🙏

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QuickSilver010@reddit

It's a tool that compliments my lifestyle

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InternationalMail748@reddit

Your friend needs to touch grass lol. I'm in IT and honestly using fedora + gnome makes total sense for someone who just wants to get work done

The whole "you must rice" attitude is like those car guys who think you're not a real enthusiast unless you're rebuilding engines every weekend. Some people just want to drive to work without their car being a second job

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Snaidheadair@reddit

Nope, I use Linux as I like it. Done distro hopping and ricing before now it's just what ever OS i like currently Fedora and what ever apps I need.

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AxenKing@reddit

It's as necessary as ricing in the car world

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tuerda@reddit

True freedom is the freedom to not constantly fuss about colorschemes.

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marrsd@reddit

I think of ricing as prettifying, so that's not a must. On the other hand, if I was forced to stick with Gnome or KDE I wouldn't even bother running Linux in the first place. So maybe you and your friend just have different needs/priorities.

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Razangriff-Raven@reddit

It's not a must, it's just yet another outlet of expression.

If you want to use your computer with all defaults or you don't have time for that stuff, more power to you. If you want to go the extra mile and customize things to suit your tastes, even better. Do what you feel like!

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TwoFoxSix@reddit

I didn't even know what ricing meant until the other day. I've been an on and off Linux user since Sabayon in 2006. I switched to mostly Linux in 2021 and have been full time Linux for about a year. I think the only thing I have done to make it look different is have a upload and download speed widget on my secondary monitor. I never see the desktops and when I use the terminal, I don't want extra crap. Function over form for me

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DoubleOwl7777@reddit

no, just because you can change something doesnt mean you have to, if you like the way things look then just keep it that way.

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indvs3@reddit

I feel there is an important divide between customisation and ricing to take note of.

I have a feeling that a grand majority of computer users, no matter the OS, customises their setup to enable their "perfect workflow" and/or a look they feel at least comfortable with on their machine. That's customisation.

Ricing is taking customisation to a level where it's not about the workflow and feeling comfortable anymore. It's just showing off at that point, which, I must add, is perfectly fine as long as it doesn't get in the way of more important stuff.

With all that having been said, I took a considerable time to customise my i3wm configs and looks so that both function and visuals are what I like them to be, in a way that works on each and every workstation I run i3wm on, yet I don't consider it ricing, because I kept my customisations, including the ones that are essentially purely visual, on a mostly functional level.

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Ill_Sense9405@reddit

Is ricing purely cosmetics?

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rambling_millers_mom@reddit

Why in the known universe would ricing be a "must"? I've been a primarily Linux user for over 30 years and I've never "riced" anything. I have a particular way of working and a preferred distro that fits that workflow and other than a few very, very minor tweaks that I keep in a script I run directly after a new installation, I leave it alone.

My setup is still "truly my own" without ricing. It's my own because it works exactly the way *I* want it to. It has nothing to do with what I have on my desktop (absolutely nothing, it's a completely black screen) or how my directories are color-coded. I don't even have fancy colored text in my terminal.

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natermer@reddit

If you like to do it as a hobby or pass time to entertain yourself that is fine. Nothing wrong with that.

It is also fine to mess around with stuff as a way of experimenting and learning. Especially if you want to write your own stuff and throw it into the mix.

The problem is people who think they are going to achieve some magical "productivity boost" by switching to a tiling environment or something like that and spending hours customizing configs.

The typical result is that they end up with something that is rather buggy and difficult to use, but it works for their specific use case. And because they put a lot of work into it then they can see a modest productivity improvement.

The problem is that if they put that much time and effort learning the sort of default environments desktop environments and shells and such things provide then they will get a similar boost in productivity without the same sort of sacrifices.

Gnome and KDE especially are incredible capable desktop environments and there is a lot more going on "under the covers" then is obvious. They have powerful scripting systems, built in ways to manage crypto, manage bluetooth and network stuff securely. All sorts of stuff.

The goal of really good software in this realm is to provide 80% or 90% of what everybody needs and leave the last 10% or 20% up to the user to do on their own.

And if all you ever do is edit config files and install different types of software to look good in screenshots you'll never get around to addressing that last 10 or 20% that is really needed to get the most out of your OS.

Remember the entire goal of the OS is to just to make running and writing software easier. That is it. Anything you do to make that more difficult or complicated then you are making the OS objectively worse.

In the end it comes down to personal preference.

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Crazy-Tangelo-1673@reddit

I think you already have a handle on it

Your friend is likely passionate about customizing his set up and nothing wrong with that other than that doesn't mean he should look down at others who don't share the same interest.

Any kind of open source use-case is pretty much free for you to use it as you wish provided you stick to the guard rails of the license.

As for me I've never been worth a damn at ricing...I like to tinker but don't have much of a flare for creative thinking in that genre so I rely on others to do the heavy lifting. I am fine with desktops and wm and now prefer Niri over anything else. The biggest part of my tinkering is the under the hood little projects I do and lately that's AI models squeezing performance out of older gpus that were never meant for it etc.

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qui3t_n3rd@reddit

I ran base KDE for years when I started using Linux full time. I tried hyprland last month, and yes it looked pretty, but a tiling WM isn't really the way I work and I had weird issues with games getting shoved into tiles or otherwise misbehaving. So now I'm back running KDE with some very mild tweaks (moved the main panel to the top and added a dock).

You absolutely can, and if you want to, that's great - the true value of Linux is simply that you have the choice. Continuously maintain the flashy environment that looks straight out of NieR Automata with the effort of a meticulously manicured lawn, or just run KDE/MATE/Xfce and get on with your day. You have the choice. By no means at all is ricing a must.

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Admirable-Detail-465@reddit

No it's just a waste of my time, I use fedora with base gnome.

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deluded_dragon@reddit

Agreed. I have been using the same wallpaper since 2006 and more or less the default theme only in recent years I have started to use one with dark menus (XFCE). The computer should be a means, not an end.

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poedy78@reddit

No, not IMO.

I mainly use my machines for work(and some gaming) and i want something that just works, pleases my eye, but basically gets out of my way.

I"m a fervent XFCE user(who would have guessed?), and the only 'ricing' i do is a custom CSS file, my custom shortcuts, other icons and switch to a dark theme. l

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Zathrus1@reddit

When I was younger I would heavily customize my systems, whether it was DOS (yes, I’m OLD), Windows, Unix, or whatever. I had a totally custom fvwm config, which I’d change based on whatever I was doing at the time.

It doesn’t take having to recreate that from scratch many times before you decide that defaults are fine and anything you do change needs to be stored in a version control system that you can easily fetch.

So I care about my bash config, my vim config, and not a hell of a lot else.

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ben2talk@reddit

Arguing with a Gnome user... ROFL.

I tuned a couple of colour schemes to suit me, and using Plasma I set up a ton of shortcuts and rules that suit my workflows...

It is those, and the scripts which I use to do stuff, that make my computer my own - and have done through my path from Ubuntu to Mint to Arch and then Manjaro, where I've been happy (on Plasma) for 9 years now.

So listening to other folks - mostly I learned to not bother with those stupid arguments.

Ricing is mostly something for people with nothing better to do than obsess over tiny details because they don't have anything to do.

Taking the argument to reddit is for people who simply can't think for themselves.

So make your own mind up, where do you fit in ;)

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AKostur@reddit

Nope. The computer and OS are a tool. If it does what you need it to do, then that should be sufficient. It's nice that Linux allows one to go tweak the internals should one choose to, and your friend appears to choose to, you have no obligation.

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ikbah_riak@reddit

Maybe I'm just old but I've not touched mine as I like the old 80s/90s no gui look.

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thephilthycasual@reddit

Bot post, move along

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Sufficient-Dare-5270@reddit

tbh ricing is fun when you first switch to linux and want everything to look like a cyberpunk movie but after a while you just want a setup that doesn't break every time you update a config file lol. i used to spend hours on polybar scripts and custom gaps but now i just stick to a basic tiling window manager with some decent defaults and move on. real talk if your setup helps you work faster then it is a win but it definitely isn't a must for everyone

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cazzipropri@reddit

I worked on Linux since 1994.

Ricing only matters to some reddit subs.

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breddy@reddit

The only MUST in Free Software is to abide the project's license. There are many MAYs and SHOULDs but customizing (by any nomenclature) is definitely not a MUST. You spend your time how you feel it should be spent.

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lavadora-grande@reddit

I did not change the wallpaper lol. I just install my stuff and firefox extensions and that's it

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TwistedStack@reddit

To which I say, it depends on one's priorities.

This is precisely it for me. I don't care what others do but I will do what accomplishes my goals. If your goal is to learn more about the OS, tweaking knobs and recompiling is fine. I get the sense that "ricers" barely understand the knobs they're tweaking. They're just part of the cargo cult.

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TheVenetianMask@reddit

I run i3wm with no gaps, the entire screen is application windows, and the status bar is hidden by default. There's only so much you can get out of staring at the DE/WM, grew up from that 25 years ago.

The only "ricing" I have is using colored Unicode characters as window icons to tell Window tabs apart.

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NoLemurs@reddit

Nope!

I've got a pretty riced-out setup, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with just installing Gnome, KDE, or XFCE, and then getting to work.

You also really don't need to be using Arch to rice. I run Debian, and it hasn't stopped me at all. On Fedora, if you want to rice, you might have to build a package or two from source that you could have gotten from the AUR if you were running Arch, but that's about all it costs you. Well, that and ArchWiki, but most of what you'll find on ArchWiki applies to other distros with minimal changes. As I mentioned, I run Debian, but ArchWiki is my main reference source for Linux config.

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ChocolateDonut36@reddit

I do because I like my stuff in a specific way.

back on windows I were using stuff like powertoys, classic shell and Cairo shell because windows is just terrible by default.

but I know some people might feel it unnecessary, my little brother rocks the plasma defaults and he ain't ricing over a custom wallpaper.

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ApplicationMaximum84@reddit

No I've been using linux since 2002 and never bothered with any ricing.

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PeanutNore@reddit

Every moment spent customizing your computer is a moment you could have been actually using your computer instead.

Regardless of what base distro I put on a machine, I just slap KDE plasma on it, run the standard update commands a couple times a week, and otherwise don't worry about it.

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TheMightyMisanthrope@reddit

Don't even know what ricing is. Been using Linux for 23 years this June.

Your friend sounds exhausting.

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Quietus87@reddit

Nope. I'm fine with my humble little Xfce. Ricing is a hobby. I have enough hobbies already that I don't have the time for thanks to work and family.

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usernamedottxt@reddit

I don’t even use a DE. Mostly base sway config. My OS is a tool, not a hobby.

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Electrical_Tomato_73@reddit

Same. I started with KDE in the late 90s, out of Windows envy. Steadily "downgraded", to XFCE, then XFCE+i3, then just i3, then just sway. And there I'll stay I think.

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KidAnon94@reddit

To answer your post title question, it's only a "must" if you want it to be one. You can do whatever you want, even is that "whatever you want" is nothing.

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Craftkorb@reddit

Err, what's ricing? Customizing?

I of course have my own, custom .zshrc, with everything set up how I like it and how it makes sense to me. Also, what do you mean with ArchLinux not being secure? Do you mean SELinux? I hope you're running all your stuff in Dockers or other containers, with the recent rise of supply chain attacks, commonly infecting your system with infostealers which SELinux does not prevent.

Anyhow, do you have to make it your own? No.

Does it make sense to spend a few hours initially to save minutes each day for years to come? Yes.

I wrote my zshrc 16 years ago, and have used it ever since with minor adjustments. Time well spent.

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jtwyrrpirate@reddit

Ah yes: https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/funroll-loops/Gentoo-is-Rice.html

The thing is, these people would be like this whether they were modifying a computer or a fish tank. It's a personality type rather than a technology thing. I say let them have their fun. When they come down on you about how un-optimized your C-flags must be, I just say, "Oh wow, I hadn't thought of that. Thanks!" and move on.

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D0nkeyHS@reddit

No, it's not a must.

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kcsebby@reddit

Functionality over appearance in nearly every aspect.

My car? Visually, its dated and looks like a clunker, but does it get me from A-to-B? Yep! My radios, I've got a couple gorgeous ones for certain uses, (I.e; APX8000 units) but my gotos for general day-to-day functionality are cheapo beater radios that if they're damaged or lost, oh well.

My Linux installs are no different. If they work for what I need em to... Great. I don't need fancy themes and colour schemes.

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